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Valerie stood at the edge of the forest. Something was wrong. Something awas hunting the children of Amity Park. The adults had done what they could, there were fences and barbed wire, and someone had even tried to burn the forest. But all the attempts had failed.
Five people had disappeared so far. Though they hadn’t really disappeared, Val thought. They were all in the hospital, but Val knew something was wrong with them. They were empty shells of themselves.
She had talked to her classmates. Quietly, they had all confessed to feeling a pull toward the forest. They tried to distract themselves, and the adults indulged them. The school threw a surprise dance, and had afterschool activities, anything to keep the children busy, to keep them safe.
But no one was really doing anything. No one was trying to find out what had really happened. Someone had to do something.
Something was coming. She could feel it. The pull to the forest grew stronger, and Valerie gritted her teeth and turned, stomping back towards town. She will do something. She will. She swears.
There was darkness in the air. She could not help but think of the Fentons. She mournedd for them, one of their children was in the hospital, but she remembered their strangeness. She knew they proclaimed that there was another world, that monsters were real. They had created weapons, weapons she mocked before.
But what if they were right? What if there were monsters in the forest, monsters that can sucked the life out of a body, monsters that could wiggle into your thoughts and lure you to come to them.
She would go to the Fentons. She would take up arms against this unknown threat.
She would free the town.
She did not know yet exactly what she would have to face, what it was that lived in the forest preying on children. But she would not be cowed. She would not be stopped. Whatever it was, monster, beast, fae, spirit, or other, she would defeat it.
—----
Inside the Forest the spirits gathered. They felt weaker than usual. The Forest was pulling more from them. They had seen shadows of beasts, and they could sense the Other pressing against the boundaries the Forest held. They were afraid. What would happen if the Other got through? Would they be devoured?
But secretly they worried about what it would cost to keep the Other away. How many of them would fade? How many of them would End?
The spirits that had been there longest did not know what happened to the bodies they left behind. Their physical forms were lost now to time.
Sam, Tucker, and Danny held each other close. What would happen to them? Would they be trapped here forever? Tucker told them that when he left, their bodies were still in comas in the hospital. Would their bodies live on then? Or would they eventually give up and their final teather to the physical plane would vanish with them?
Two more children had joined them, though they did not know their names. They were younger than them, in early elementary school. They were devastated at first, but had adapted faster. It helped that there were young spirits here who could play with them. Though, the trio thought, it was slightly frightening that the spirits have not really aged or matured from the moment of their untethering.
There were spirits who were the trio’s age as well, and some who were a few years older. They thought that the oldest was Johnny who said he was 17, and the youngest was a boy who called himself Youngblood. They thought he was six.
But there were also stranger things. Creatures made of energy, floating octopuses, a dog, and a parrot that hung out with Youngblood. Sam thought that they were the amalgamations of energy that had escaped from the Other. But no one knew for sure.
They had to do something. But they did not know what.